


High Five For Shitty Bodies

by Returnofmorningstar



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Body Image, Coming Out, Dysphoria, Gen, Siren Rhys, Trans Male Character, Trans Rhys, trans author
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 01:59:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16777363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Returnofmorningstar/pseuds/Returnofmorningstar
Summary: Timothy thought he knew all of Rhys' secrets. Turns out he was wrong.





	High Five For Shitty Bodies

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a final (yes really) and I would like some feedback. Please don't critique Rhys' feelings towards his body. 
> 
> Some facts: 1) Timothy is stationed on Pandora as a vault hunter. He does not wear a disguise but has cut and dyed his hair black. He may or may not have some kind of facial hair (never decided). Basically, he is not easily recognizable as Jack. 2) Rhys' parents work(ed) for Dahl. After Dahl pulled out of Pandora, Rhys stopped hearing from them, and came to Pandora to search for them after graduating from college.
> 
> Update 12/4: I edited out some mistakes. Hopefully that means it's clear.

After two months of traveling with Rhys, Timothy thought there were no more surprises that the weird kid could throw at him. He’d survived the revelation that Rhys’ cybernetic arm was part of an elective procedure that removed his perfectly functioning flesh arm and replaced it, along with the cybernetic eye; that Rhys had graduated from the same university as Tim (unfortunately revealing that Tim had graduated a full ten years before him); and finally that, despite his parents working for Dahl, Rhys was obsessed with Handsome Jack and was scheduled to begin working as a code monkey for Hyperion next season. All of that had been jarring, the latter also concerning, but digestible. 

Then there were some things that weren’t so easy to swallow. 

He almost missed it. For a basic college nerd, Rhys was damn good at taking care of himself. Tim rarely worried about him when it came to bandits or psychos. Those stupidly long legs were good for kicking and running, and Rhys had a pretty good handle on the burst fire Dahl pistols. Although he barely held a candle against Timothy and his vault hunter training, they had figured out a system of teamwork that didn’t involve getting in each other’s way and cut down the work they had to do individually. It worked fabulously for two months—and it would have continued to work just fine if Tim hadn’t forgotten to watch his back.

Tim heard the revving of the buzz axe behind him before he heard the nonsensical cry of its wielder. He didn’t have the time or opportunity to turn around, locked in a grotesque embrace with a half-dead bandit poorly trying to strangle him (Jack had taught him the “best” way to strangle someone as one of his first lessons as a body double). The roar grew closer, so close that he could feel the displacement of air behind his head. 

There was a time when he would have accepted, even embraced, his doom. But now, after everything he went through on Elpis and Pandora, he resented the idea of being brained by some dimwitted psycho. That was _ not _ how he was going to die. 

Tim shifted his footing in the dirt and landed a kick against the bandit’s crotch. The fingers fell from his throat and another kick knocked him on his ass. He whirled around to—catch it maybe? He wasn’t completely sure. But a severed hand was way better than a split skull. 

It took him a couple of seconds to register the sight in front of him. The psycho, with his buzz axe still revving, flailed and writhed while suspended six feet off the ground in some sort of orb. Another scent was mixed in with the metallic tang of blood and gunpowder in the air, a familiar scent that haunted the mountains marred with mining machinery: eridium. And the presence of eridium meant… Sirens. Shit.

“Rhys,” he said without looking away. His voice was drowned out by gunfire. “Rhys! It’s time to go!” 

He sidestepped the bandit staggering up to his feet and tripped over a rogue buzz axe on the ground. His hand stung as he caught himself on a rock and blood tickled his palm. He glanced down at it with a glare and a curse about this godforsaken planet, then looked back up. Rhys had his left arm outstretched in Tim’s direction and his pistol in his cybernetic hand. He dropped his arm to reload and and Tim watched the faintest blue glow fade from an exposed wrist. It had always occurred to him that he’d never seen Rhys without his jacket or glove, and he’d never really thought anything of it until now. 

“Duck!” 

Tim dropped like it was the first time he’d felt Pandora’s gravity, just in time for an axe to sail over his head. The rusty blade imbedded itself in the cracked earth a few feet away and a psycho shouted behind him. He didn’t need to look to know that it was free from the orb.

He scrambled to his feet and sprinted back to the buggy. Once he had the engine started, he tried calling again. “Rhys! Get in the car!” 

Finally, Rhys listened. He ran to the buggy and swung himself into the back with experienced ease. He wasn’t even in his seat before Tim threw it in reverse and gunned it down the unkempt desert path that was supposed to serve as a road. 

He drove and drove until his hands were cramped from his grip on the steering wheel. He stopped abruptly and switched off the engine. They were in the middle of nowhere, with neither a bandit hideout or skag den in sight for miles. 

Rhys leaned down from his perch in the back. “Hey, what’re you doing? We need to find shelter.” Tim didn’t respond or even acknowledge him. “Are you okay? You didn’t get hit by an axe, did you?”

_ You didn’t get hit by an axe, did you?  _ That was the crux of the problem, wasn’t it? He didn’t get hit.

“Are you a siren?” It came out in one rushed breath, like he’d been holding it in.

The silence was filled by the squeaking of Rhys’ seat as he shifted. “Yes.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“I don’t like to talk about it.” 

“Is that why you never take off your jacket?” 

“Yes.” 

Tim closed his eyes. He didn’t know how to feel. Anger felt justified; Rhys had been lying to him, deceiving him, for two months. He was undeniably hurt, because Rhys hadn’t trusted him enough, after everything they’d been through, to tell him the truth. But tangled among the hurt and anger was awe. There were only ever four sirens in the universe at one time and he was traveling with one.

But sirens were female. Rhys was not. 

He swallowed around the knot in his throat and picked at a new hole in his pants with a fingernail. “You’re the first male siren I’ve ever heard about, even in legends.” 

The answering laugh was so deeply bitter that it startled him. This didn’t sound like the rather outgoing and cheerful Rhys he knew, but after this revelation, he wasn’t even sure he knew Rhys at all.

“There’s still no such thing as a  _ male _ siren.” His tense voice cracked with despair. He slipped out of the buggy and started walking.

Tim hopped out and started to follow him. Pandoran nights were just as harsh as its days; if they went too far they might freeze, but that wasn’t on list of Tim’s priorities. 

Once he caught up (a bit of a challenge thanks to those long legs), Tim grabbed his wrist and stopped him from walking away. “Rhys, wait.” 

Rhys wouldn’t look at him, but in the light of Elpis, Tim could see the shining tears in his eyes and the set of his smooth jaw. Everything started to fall into place. The jacket, the way his voice cracked, how Tim had so easily mistaken him for a teenager when they first met, and how he could be a siren. 

“So you’re… uh…” 

Rhys freed his wrist, although he stayed put. “Don’t say it.” 

Despite complying, Tim had questions. “Why hide it? You don’t have to be ashamed—” 

“I’m not ashamed!” Rhys snapped. When Tim reflexively flinched, he swallowed and repeated, “I’m not ashamed,” in a softer voice. “At least… not exactly.” With a sigh, he shed his jacket and held out his arm in the moonlight. The swirling tattoos covered his left arm and trailed under his shirt and glove. They were not glowing like before, but the pattern was unmistakable. No wonder he kept it hidden.

“You can touch it,” he said, and Tim realized he’d been waiting for permission. The skin was rough and tacky with dried sweat, which was to be expected after wearing a jacket in the day, and the markings felt no different. There was no change in texture from the rest of his skin. It was not ink, but something else, something mystical.

Tim resisted the urge to call them beautiful and instead asked, “Are they supposed to be on your right side?” 

“Told you had I had elective surgery to remove that arm, didn’t I?” 

Tim’s eyes widened and withdrew his hand. “You didn’t.”

Rhys nodded as he tugged the jacket back on with a shiver. “I did. But I didn’t lie about the reason; the goal of the procedure  _ was _ to replace it with the cybernetic arm to gain an advantage in college. But I also thought if I had the arm cut off, I could pretend I wasn’t a siren.” He sighed again. “Then, less than two weeks after getting a new arm, I woke up and had the same marking on my left side. I got so upset that I threw up.”

Tim winced at the mental image. “Still… that would have been really handy knowledge a while ago. We could have avoided dozens of shootouts just by showing off those tattoos. Sirens are like Pandoran boogeymen.”

His face hardened into a grimace. “Don’t you get it? I don’t  _ care  _ that it would make life easier. I don’t care that I’m basically some sort of demigod. I hate it so much because it reminds me and everyone else of what I  _ really  _ am. I had to fight tooth and nail for both the cybernetic surgery and when I had my top surgery, because the doctors were afraid of messing with the tattoos. I had to  _ fight  _ them. Every single time. You will never know how hard it is to go to a doctor and ask for testosterone, only for the doctor to refuse you because you’re a siren.” His voice wavered and he sucked in a breath before he continued. “I’ve learned to accept every other part of myself. But this is something I can never fix, can never change, can never truly hide. I could get every type of reconstructive surgery in the six galaxies and there would  _ still  _ be a part of me that remains undeniably female.” 

Tim didn’t fill the silence after Rhys stopped talking. He had never been graceful with words, not unless he had time to write them down. But he had something he felt like he needed to say. “This isn’t my body. I don’t think so, anyway. I used to have freckles and red hair. I used to be four inches shorter. I wore glasses. My face wasn’t even shaped like this. But I traded that all away and became a literal body double so I could pay my student loans.” 

He paused in anticipation for a laugh, the usual reaction he received, but Rhys’ mouth was still curled into a frown. He cleared his throat. “None of my family or friends know where I am. Legally, Timothy Lawrence does not exist. You know my real name because saying my boss’s name, “my” name, here would get me killed. And it sucks. I miss my old body. I was never confident and I never had good self-esteem. But now that I don’t have it, I miss it. So maybe it’s not the same thing, and maybe if you were in my place you would be ecstatic to have a completely new body, but it might not be so bad being a siren. I mean, I would be skag food if it wasn’t for you, so thanks for that.” That finally earned him a smile. 

“And we know so little about sirens… There’s probably something deeper to what makes a siren than just being female. Who knows, you could have alien ancestors somewhere in your family tree, or maybe they’re chosen based on their future potential. Four sirens can only exist at a time, so we don’t really have that many examples. If there’s anything I learned in those four years, it’s that we never know everything.” 

Rhys finally laughed, and it sounded similar to the laugh Tim knew so well. Not quite there, but close. “I always hated that saying. My professors used to use it to justify never giving me one hundred percent on my assignments. But I guess you’re right about that. It still hurts and I think it always will, but that’s life, I guess.”

“Especially on Pandora,” Tim agreed. “High five for shitty bodies?” Rhys raised his right hand and Tim shook his head. “You’re not hitting me with that. Besides, I cut myself earlier. Left hands only.” 

With a roll of his eyes, Rhys switched hands. His glove muffled most of the sound, which was probably for the best considering their position in the open. “Let’s get back to the buggy and see if we can hit the nearest town before sunrise. I need a bath.” 

Tim nodded and together they walked back towards the buggy. It felt good to get his feelings off his chest, and he hoped Rhys felt the same way. Before he could start the engine though, Rhys leaned forward and asked, “So...whose body double are you supposed to be?” 

He bit the inside of his lip. He really didn’t want to tell Rhys that he was a body double for Handsome Jack, not after he had to listen to Rhys gush about him for a whole week. “You don’t want to know. And saying it would breach my contract, and I’m pretty sure there’s a bomb somewhere in this body that goes off if I do.” 

“What if I guess it? If I get it right, will you tell me?” 

The engine rumbled when Tim switched it on. “Nope.” 

“That’s unfair.” 

He could practically feel the pout Rhys was giving him. His face hurt from stifling his smile and he tried to hide it as he started driving. “That’s Pandora, kiddo.” 


End file.
